/Dodges stinky shoes and rotting veggies/ Eep! Sorry about the wait on the update! I got a full-time job, there's only one phone line, and I live with twelve other people, 'kays?

DISCLAIMER: /Screams/ It's MINE, it's finally mine! /Looks at the letter and bursts into tears/ It's not mine. WAAAH! I want my lawyer!

Chapter Nine

Clark felt as if someone had tied kryptonite weights around his ankles and thrown him into Crater Lake.

Shakily, he reached for his glass of water as he waited for Chloe's reaction-- and more importantly, his parents' reactions.

Martha brought her hand to her mouth, mortified. "Oh my God, Clark."

Her eyes welled up with tears, and Jonathan's voice was thick as he asked, "How did she manage that, Son?"

"I-- one minute I was telling this girl to go home, the next there was kryptonite everywhere," Clark answered, trying to block out the memories of helplessness.

"Why would anyone--" Martha started, but was interrupted by her son.

"It has something to do with being Superman."

Chloe frowned, started to pick up her coffee, but set it back down in favor of a question. "What makes you think that."

"She said she'd been a fan since she'd first seen him." Clark was looking at his hands, the wall, anywhere but his shocked parents' eyes.

"So whoever this psycho is, she-- or he-- is hellbent on tormenting the local lifesaver? It doesn't make sense," Chloe muttered.

"Life's like that sometimes," Jonathan said, for once not having a more appropriate platitude.

Except for the clinking of Chloe's spoon in her coffee mug, it was pretty much silent for a few minutes as the older Kents absorbed all this. The quiet made Clark even more nervous than the questions had.

Lex was the polar opposite. The commotion had scraped his nerves raw with tension as he worried about Clark. Too much talking, not enough doing. What's going to happen when she comes back? he wondered, world-wise enough to know nothing would stop her from doing so. After all, she wasn't exactly sane.

A bird kept chirping outside the window, and in the relative peace it stuck out like a girl in a gay bar. It didn't help the tension headache the young businessman felt coming on, and he considered asking to borrow Jonathan's shotgun to kill the damn thing.

Unable to stand it anymore, he asked, "So what do we do?"

Chloe sighed. "First, I have a friend of mine at Met PD do a sweep of your apartment and everything the police took for evidence, and see if she can get some DNA testing done. If this person has a criminal record, we'll at least know who we're after. If not, we'll have something to compare future evidence with." Seeing the distressed,wide-eyed look on her farmboy friend, she amended, "If there is future evidence. Once we've figured out who this is, we get as much info on this girl as possible. Phone numbers, address, see if she pops up in any old newspapers, run a total background check on her. Then we go from there."

Lex nodded.

"In the meantime," Jonathan said, stern lookin place, "our son stays here."

"That's why I brought him here, Mr. Kent."

"Lex stays too," Martha dictated in that quiet, the-foot-is-down way she had.

"Alright, Martha," her husband sighed. He looked as if he'd just agreed to grow a colony of mold in his closet.

"Okay. Well, I'll see you all later," Chloe said, dumping the dregs of her coffee in the sink and rinsing out the mug before leaving.

The farmer's wife sighed. "Well boys, you can share the loft, or you can share your old room Clark."

"The loft," Clark said.

"I'll help you boys get it in shape," Martha offered as she rose from her chair.

Jonathan slipped out to tend the fields, and to think a little more on the chaos that had just entered the household.